March 12, 2011

Getting Down To It

I know that I am getting into a good training routine when 2 hours can go by on the trainer fast. I usually start out my season by slowly morphing skiing and indoor riding together and slowly just adding more time the bike. The first couple weeks riding inside goes bad. The legs turn over slow and rollers just add to the sluggish feeling. Then I start putting in less time on skis and start adding specific workouts to the bike and time starts to go faster on the trainer. With a good interval workout, I can easily do 2.5 hours and it's not that bad these days. That said though I just did a 2 hour steady state ride on the trainer and it was an eternity, but by mixing it up with intervals most of the time goes by fast. I am even to the point where I would rather do my workouts now on the trainer than take the time to dress for outside riding. I think the workouts are better because you can moniter exactly what you need to be doing, but it does take discipline.

post workout recovery smoothie sharing

After 2 months on the trainer I got outside the other day because it was sunny and I figured I better, it was like my legs were spring loaded. Riding a trainer you get the sense you are always pedaling through mud, I think that is because you don't carry momentum like outside. Inside you take the pressure off the pedal for 1 second and you have to bring the speed back up from zero where outside you are still rolling at 18mph. Probably why you get an overall better workout riding the rollers than riding the same time outside. I think if you had the dedication to always ride inside you could probably get more out of all your workouts, but what fun would that really be when it is nice out.I read blogs and facebook updates of lots of guys out doing base riding and I think "man, that must be nice to have that much time." I don't have that kind of time though. I could maybe do a couple days in a row of big miles, but I don't have the time to recover from that or keep it up day after day. Now that I have been on the anti-base mile program for a couple years I really wonder if it is any good for anyone that races regionaly or not on a big pro team that does stage racing. I really don't see a reason at all for putting in huge miles around here when the longest road race is 80 miles and a majority of the racing is crits and 2 hour mtn bike races. Intensity is where it is at for that kind of racing and I don't see long miles doing much for that around here. Maybe that is just my way of justifying not doing it, but I wouldn't want to ride for 3 months doing base and go to my first race and feel slow because of lack of speed work or intensity. After 3 months of training I'd want to be firing pretty well and have the cobwebs blown out already. I guess if we lived in AZ where it was nice out year round that might be different, but being stuck in WI for 6 months of winter just adds to the fact that base riding just doesn't really work that well in WI unless you have lots of time, but not a lot of money to leave, and like being miserable.

So, we'll see how the rest of March goes for weather and workouts. Barry Roubaix in MI looks like a good goal for an early season test. I'm going to have to pull some crazy moves to get down there between friday night at 9pm when I can sneak out of work and 10am saturday race time, but that is how it goes.